Roulaison Distilling Making Rum: Bottles Available for Sale Soon

For Roulaison Distilling owners, Andrew Lohfeld and Patrick Hernandez, this is when the fun begins. After many months of securing permits, setting up the distillery and planning, Lohfeld and Hernandez are finally making rum.

It won’t long before Roulaison Rum will be available for purchase.

“It’s a relief,” says Lohfeld, an experienced spirit production engineer. “We’re in the experimental phase: seeing what different flavor profiles that various yeasts produce.”

Located on the ground floor of Green Coast office building (2727 Broad St.), Roulaison takes an old school approach distilling rum. The process“a pure pot still that requires a seven-day fermentation and then runs through two distillations•“harkens back to the 1300s and uses three simple ingredients: water, molasses and yeast. Commercial rums, on the other hand, require only 24-48 for fermentation and the distillation is almost instantaneous.

“We’re focused on creating distinct flavors and this takes time and testing,” Lohfeld says. “Mass market rum is really about using high alcohol-tolerant yeasts and getting the ethanol in the bottle.”

With a warm aroma of molasses, the Roulaison distilling warehouse, which will include a tasting area, is an olfactory heaven. Lohfeld presents a recent batch that gives off a whiff of banana while another batch smells like anise and pineapple. The two owners plan on selling standard rum by the beginning of January while other batches will be aged in barrels.

“We will have a tasting room by the end of January or the beginning of February,” says Hernandez.

Even though they continue to put in 12 hour days, seven days a week, Lohfeld and Hernandez are excited to see their dream of distillery and tasting room coming to fruition. Like the rum they produce, it™s worth the wait.

To keep up to date on Roulaison•(tm)s progress, follow them on Facebook and Instagram (@roulaison).